From the Now We’ve Seen Everything Department (A large and busy department here in the Sunshine State):

Florida Republican Congressman Tom Rooney has introduced language into the federal budget bill to block the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from implementing important new public health protections for Florida.

As you’ve read in this space before, the EPA’s new water pollution limits are designed to control the public health threat posed by the green slime that continually breaks out on Florida waterways. This horrid slime is fed by partially treated sewage, animal waste and fertilizer pollution. (Pictures here. ) Florida health authorities have had to close swimming areas and drinking water plants because of this toxic algae. The algae outbreaks can cause breathing problems, sores, rashes, illness, and even death.

"As Stoneman Douglas warned: we're not done." (Mark Wallheiser)

Many years ago, a friend of mine was just starting out in the environmental movement, and the late Florida environmental activist Marjory Stoneman Douglas (she authored the classic Everglades: River of Grass) offered some advice.

If you're going to do this kind of work, prepare to have your heart broken, because even when you win, you're never done.

So it is with our landmark lawsuit to get enforceable limits on the amount of sewage, fertilizer and animal waste that run into Florida's public waters. Even though we've had bright green slime covering rivers and lakes, even though health authorities had to close famed Florida beaches because of pollution, and even though drinking water has been fouled, polluters and misguided politicians continue to fight cleanup.

Julington Creek Marina. 347 ug/l, M. aeruginosa. Photo taken on July 31, 2009. (Florida Water Coalition)

Our long fight to get clear standards to control pollution from fertilizer, animal waste, and sewage hit a major milestone this week (Nov. 15), when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced new, enforceable limits in Florida—the first ever in the U.S.

EPA scientists worked in conjunction with scientists at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to set these important limits on excess nutrients—phosphorus and nitrogen—which are wrecking waters in Florida and all over the U.S.

This first set of new EPA standards governs nutrient discharges into Florida's freshwaters and lakes. The limits will be phased in so that industries have time to make needed changes to clean up dirty discharges.

Green slime caused by polluted waters

The EPA committed to set these new limits after Earthjustice, representing Florida Wildlife Federation, Sierra Club, Conservancy of Southwest Florida, Environmental Confederation of Southwest Florida, and St. Johns Riverkeeper, sued in 2008.

It turns out that these former secretaries are at drastically at odds with public opinion. The EPA reports that it has received 22,000 public comments on the proposed new nutrient pollution standards, and 20,000 of those comments were in support of the standards.

People want clean water! Sadly, Florida is rock bottom in the U.S. in terms of protecting its waters from pollution. Across the United States, scientists report that 30 percent of bays and estuaries and 44 percent of streams have unsafe water. But in Florida, it is much worse—more than 98 percent of the state's bays and estuaries, and more than 54 percent of its streams, are unsafe to swim and/or fish in. The BP oil spill disaster this summer showed us that even the possibility of pollution can chase away Florida's number-one economic engine—tourism.

Grinning for good reason...

Earthjustice won a key victory at summer's end in our long-running fight to restore the Florida Everglades. A court-appointed Special Master recommended that the state be allowed to abandon a $700 million reservoir project in the southern Everglades Agricultural Area.

Why is this good news? The reservoir was once an important part of Everglades restoration, but the giant public works project was mothballed—and rightly so—when Florida negotiated a deal to buy large swaths of Everglades land from the U.S. Sugar Company. The U.S. Sugar land holdings are a better alternative to store and filter polluted runoff as it runs down the peninsula into Everglades National Park and Florida Bay.

St. John's River algae infestation - Courtesy Jacksonville University

Florida's St. John's River is fouled this summer with green slime, and dead fish are washing up on its shores. Every time it rains, nutrients like phosphorous and nitrogen poison this river and others all over Florida. The poison comes from sewage, animal manure and fertilizer.

It is a crisis big enough that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency agreed in November 2009 to set the first-ever legal limits for nutrient poisoning.

But, now, polluters are trying to derail efforts to clean up Florida's waters. They arrived enmasse recently at Congress, where they met with numerous federal lawmakers to try getting a rider put on the federal appropriations bill. The rider would, unbelievably, prevent EPA from setting important new limits on nutrient pollution. The rider may be introduced in a few weeks.

We have our fingers crossed here in Florida that the gushing oil well in the Gulf of Mexico is finally plugged. This has been a nightmare summer for all of us.

Now we begin the grim tasks of assessing the damage to vast stretches of some of the most productive wetlands and shorelines in the world—wetlands that no one knows how to clean up.

We will see what toll the oil and dispersants take on wildlife. And we will see how oil, sprayed by dispersants and now floating around in the water column, behaves in storms.

Our other task is to make sure that the government and the oil industry learn from this disaster.

<Update: The EPA has revealed the chemical ingredients list of what's in the dispersant being put on oil spilled in the Gulf of Mexico. Earthjustice sought the information through the Freedom of Information Act.>

Here in Florida, the oil spill calamity in the Gulf of Mexico is poised to undo years and years of our hard work to keep Florida's waters clean. That is a sobering and devastating fact.

So, it is with heavy hearts that we in the Florida Earthjustice office have turned our attention to the one thing we can apply our expertise to during this disaster: making sure federal rules are strengthened so that we don't have to watch such a ridiculously and shamefully inadequate spill cleanup response again.

To wit, we've filed seven federal suits against the Minerals Management Service, the agency that's supposed to regulate oil drillers. Our clients are the Sierra Club and the Gulf Restoration Network.

Our review of federal records turned up lax regulation and make-believe filings by BP about the company's ability to handle a spill. For example:

The Everglades from above. Photo: NPS

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico looms as I write this on a sunny, cloudless Florida day. It is the oddest feeling, waiting for this slick to hit. Waiting like we wait for hurricanes, spinning offshore.

This sticky crude oil threatens to devastate the fragile marshes, estuaries, islands and beaches that we here at the Earthjustice Florida office spend our days trying to protect. It is heartbreaking and we are angry. Angry that our Florida legislators proposed a bill that would have allowed offshore oil drilling 3 to 10 miles offshore (Florida environmental groups fought off the bill.)

Since a recent judicial order in Florida's efforts to restore the Everglades hit the news, many people are asking: What does it mean?

The short answer is that it creates both risks and opportunities.

The twists and turns of this case are pretty complex, so let me explain what Federal Judge Mareno's order does. The judge granted a motion to force the South Florida Water Management District to spend $700 million to build a reservoir in the southern Everglades Agricultural Area.